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1.8.3-Sarah1281
Brick!Club 1.8.3 Javert Satisfied Now we get the flashback to what happened though it’s pretty clear. Javert got the news that Madeleine confessed to being Valjean and is here to arrest him. It took him less than five hours to get back to M-sur-M from Arras since he took the mail wagon and it’s a good, thing, too. If it had taken another fifteen he would have been arrested before he made it to Fantine’s side. I wonder what was in that letter. Maybe something saying he was abruptly going to take all of his fortune away so be ready? The district attorney was not happy his case had been ruined and tried to deny everything. The defense counsel was horribly unprepared and incompetent but managed to cobble together a shoddy speech and the judge allowed the fact he was a royalist and Valjean mentioned the Emperor to sway his decision and he sided with the defense so the jury threw the case out. They didn’t seem to really address the actual crime he was on trial for but the case there didn’t seem like it was ever very strong. How, exactly, did Valjean become a Napoleon man? Napoleon rolled back a lot of the reforms the republic had made (including public branding) and he conquered a bunch of land while leaving people to starve in the streets. Plus he was in jail for all of Napoleon’s rule. Why, other than Hugo’s own Napoleon sentiments, would Valjean respect Napoleon enough to call him the Emperor? I doubt he formed this opinion while in Toulon. The district attorney had a quota to fill and so, when the jury didn’t buy his Champmathieu theory, he demanded the arrest of Valjean. The royalist judge acquiesced. What little things cause such big effects! “Justice must, after all, take its course.” The irony, it is choking me. Javert went to bed depressed about being wrong about Madeleine, planning to get himself fired, and satisfied that he had at least gotten Valjean imprisoned. He woke up finding out he was right all along and now had to go arrest Valjean. That’s a lot to process so early in the morning. I wonder if the news was delivered to him before he dressed. “The messenger himself was a very clever member of the police, who, in two words, informed Javert of what had taken place at Arras.” I don’t quite know what to make of it. I would assume that he said “Madeleine confessed” or “Valjean confessed” but if he did then Javert would have more of an idea of what happened and have to consider why a convict would knowingly screw himself over and he doesn’t. He probably says “Madeleine’s Valjean” then. Two words! And the order just says to arrest Madeleine who was “recognized” as Valjean and no mention is made of how that came to be. Javert looks perfectly composed except his clothing is not 100% neat and orderly so he is extremely disturbed. And now he has to go arrest his superior who is a convict who he has apologized for denouncing. Poor guy. There still doesn’t seem to be much police presence in the town but at least he has the power to borrow soldiers whenever he needs to. And of course he knows exactly where Valjean is. He doesn’t check his home or office, he goes straight to Fantine. He opens the door and stands there staring at the scene. It’s only a minute until Fantine noticed him but I wonder if he would have waited there until someone did or Valjean made a move to leave. Was he…trying to give them a moment and not disturb the dying woman as long as he could be sure that his prey would not escape him? That’s pretty much canon in the musical and movie unless you really believe that he just HAPPENS to show up two seconds after Fantine dies and I don’t. No human sentiment can be as terrible as joy? Okay then. He wouldn’t be have as excited about this if he hadn’t been taking it upon himself to investigate Madeleine for the past five years or so and hadn’t recently thought he was wrong and been made (by himself) to apologize and try to ruin his own life because of this. Javert is pleased and the text makes it clear that this is not a good thing even though he really does have no choice but to arrest Valjean here. I guess the point is that his duty is monstrous and so he shouldn’t be so damned pleased about it. He is getting a little carried away with himself as the symbol of law and order and is pretty much the textbook case of how it is possible to be TOO good. The other example, of course, being Valjean but Javert will come to see that in time. Commentary Serrende I didn’t get the feeling that Jean Valjean was particularly pro-Napoleon. Rather, he seems to be quite apolitical. I think he just referred to him as “the Emperor” out of habit - it’s how he’d heard him being referred to for years, and he was the emperor, after all. For Valjean, I think it was factual more than excessively respectful. Granted, with the learning he picked up at Montreuil-sur-Mer he should probably have realised it wasn’t a good idea to say “the Emperor” any longer (he didn’t really socialise much, but he must have read newspapers, not just books, right?); but it’s easy for me to imagine that little fact had slipped his mind in that highly emotional moment. He wasn’t trying to protect himself in any way any longer, so habit took over. Sarah1281 (reply to Serrende) I really like that interpretation, especially since I’m not crazy about Valjean being a Napoleon fan and don’t see why he would be. In fact, the only Napoleon fan we really come across years after Napoleon was defeated who is a big character is Marius and he is proven wrong there. Pilferingapples I am curious about The Napoleon Thing— is it just that Valjean is basically apolitical and massively out of touch? Does he like Napoleon BECAUSE he was in prison most of the time, and missed the various shifts of opinion? Because Napoleon gave the Bishop his seat? PEOPLE WHO KNOW THE THINGS, surely you are out there— is there some reason an ex-con/businessman/Valjean would prefer an Emperor to a King, besides that it helps turn the plot in the right direction? Overall, it doesn’t seem like the prosecution OR defense were really all that strong in the Champmathieu case- small wonder since they were really there for the Valjean case, and both seemed to take it all as a chance for rhetoric practice rather than a cause or a person’s life to address. BUT WE ARE DONE WITH THE TRIAL AND I MISSED IT so I will skip those topics. Maedhrys (reply to Pilferingapples) Ummm here are my guesses re: Valjean and Napoleon. -Maybe Montreuil-sur-Mer was a town in which Buonapartist opinion prevailed and he’s just picked up on the prevailing mode of speech, because, as you said, he’s basically apolitical? -On the other hand, maybe in addressing Cochepaille, who has a tattoo of the date of the landing, he adapts to the terminology Cochepaille would use. -I thought I had a third one but I,um, can’t remember it.